BCDR Simulator

Overview

Business continuity and disaster recovery planning comes down to two numbers. The recovery point objective, RPO, is how much data you can afford to lose, measured back from the moment of failure. The recovery time objective, RTO, is how long you can afford to be down. This simulator plays a disaster against a running business and lets you choose the backup strategy in advance: a hot site that runs continuously and takes over almost at once, a warm site that is partly running and needs some time to scale up, or a cold site that has to be built and restored from backups after the disaster. The story moves through normal operations, the moment disaster strikes, customers unable to reach the service, the backup systems being activated and the business coming back online, then explains the data lost and the downtime your choice produced. The comparison makes the trade-off concrete: a lower RPO and RTO cost more every month, so the right strategy depends on what an hour of downtime or of lost data costs the business.

Try this

1. Choose a cold backup, play the disaster through and note the data loss and downtime at the end.
2. Replay with a hot backup and compare the RPO and RTO figures in the summary.
3. Try the warm backup and decide whether its middle ground would fit a business you know.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between RPO and RTO?

RPO is the maximum acceptable data loss, measured in time before the failure, and the business sets it; backup frequency and replication are then chosen to meet it. RTO is the maximum acceptable downtime, measured from the failure until service is restored.

What is the difference between hot, warm and cold disaster recovery sites?

A hot site runs a live copy and can take over almost immediately. A warm site has infrastructure ready but needs data restored or capacity scaled. A cold site is little more than space or an account that must be built out after the disaster.

How often should a disaster recovery plan be tested?

Regularly, at least once a year and after major changes. An untested backup is not a recovery plan, because restores often fail on missing steps, credentials or dependencies.